Phytoplankton community timescales and length scales of correlation

Posted on by Angela M. Kuhn

Together with collaborators of MIT, University of Washington and Old Dominion University, we have quantified timescales and length scales of decorrelation for a broad range of model phytoplankton species, functional traits, and body sizes. Our goal was to gain new insights about regional contributions of physical dispersal in shaping the phytoplankton community structure.

Spatial correlation scales of small phytoplankton (less or equal than 2 micrometers)

We used biomass anomalies from the long-term output of the MIT-gcm GUD, a complex plankton community model that replicates well global patterns of plankton diversity. We estimated decorrelation timescales from temporal autocorrelation functions and length scales from the correlations between each grid cell and adjacent waters at lag zero. In essence, we asked: 1. How long does it take for perturbations in biomass to disappear? and 2. Over what distance do populations vary in concert?

Published by Angela M. Kuhn

I'm a biological oceanographer with interest in understanding the effects of the ocean's physical variability on the marine ecosystem at different scales. I use diverse statistical methods and numerical experiments to systematically combine information from observations, simple and complex numerical marine ecosystem models.